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A controversial subdivision proposal along Oshawa’s shoreline has local residents and a city councillor crying foul, but the developer says they’ve played by the rules.

SO Development Inc. is seeking to build one 56-unit block of townhouses and another 216-unit block of detached and semi-detached homes near the corner of Phillip Murray Ave. and Park Road South in Oshawa.

The area is a chunk of undeveloped space surrounded by housing developments, and locals say it’s one of the last green spaces they have left along the water.

Paul Hughes has lived in the area for years.

His opposition to the two projects is two-fold: he says the area where SO Development wants to build is one of the last remaining along the shoreline where people can enjoy green space and the open air. It’s an important migration stop for monarch butterflies, he says.

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“It’s going to be really high density. It’s going to be horrible, what they’re proposing to do. It’s going to take up that waterfront,” he said.

Ryan Guetter, the vice president of planning and urban design firm Weston Consulting, which represents SO Development Inc., said there appears to be a misunderstanding over the intended use of the land in question, which is owned by SO Developments Inc.

According to Guetter, the land has always been zoned for residential development. While his client’s proposal does seek to have the zoning bylaws amended to allow for a higher density, it would still fall below the maximum density allowed under Oshawa’s official city plan.

“What needs to be crystal clear here is that this land was never designated as green space, open space or park land,” Guetter said.

At a marathon city planning meeting on Monday, dozens of people turned out to oppose the project, many citing similar concerns.

The first speaker, former councillor Brian Nicolson, said the idea of putting 56 homes on “that small block of land… Has to be one of the dumbest development ideas ever proposed in the community.”

“This council has fought hard over many decades… To preserve access to the waterfront and make sure there’s a family community. Don’t throw it away on three-storey townhouses jammed into a lot and don’t allow them to clear cut one of the most natural green-space tree corridors that we have in the city so they can jam in a parkette that’s not going to serve anyone,” he said. “I urge you to reject this.”

But Guetter said that the city’s growth plan and provincial legislation encourage higher density in urban areas, like the land in question.

“We’re simply implementing approved policy,” Guetter said.

Close to 30 Oshawa residents spoke in total, raising concerns about the development’s impact on everything from the environment to the nearby General Motors plant to local wildlife to traffic to possible health issues for future residents. All but two explicitly said they were opposed to the development.

There were numerous suggestions that the city should buy the land back from SO Developments Inc. and designate it as protected park land.

Oshawa city councillor Amy McQuaid-England said she was forced to file a "strongly worded" letter from her lawyer before city staff would release environmental assessment documents related to SO Development Inc.'s proposed subdivision on the Oshawa waterfront. (Facebook)

Further complicating the matter is that opposed local residents say the environmental assessments for the proposal were withheld from them and even from Oshawa city councillor Amy McQuaid-England.

When McQuaid-England asked to see the documents, staff told her she’d have to file a formal freedom to information request to get them, a process that can take weeks or months.

“I sit on the Environmental Advisory Committee, and we were denied access to the environmental site assessments,” McQuaid-England said.

“I had to get my lawyer to send a very strongly-worded letter to the city saying that the documents are public and you can’t just refuse them,” she said.

McQuaid-England finally got copies of the document Monday afternoon, hours before a Development Services Committee Planning Act public meeting to discuss the project.

Having reviewed the documents, McQuaid-England said she’s concerned about the level of density the project proposes, in particular the number of zoning exemptions the proponents are seeking, for things like smaller lot sizes.

“They’re asking to be exempt from pretty much all of our zoning,” she said.

“This is one of the last pieces of land that isn’t developed along the (waterfront) trail. They want smaller frontages so that they can get the maximum amount of housing in this small area.”

But her larger concern was that the process so far has been less than transparent.

McQuaid-England said public notices were only sent to 20 local residents on Christmas Eve. The city’s offices were closed until Jan. 5, meaning residents only had a little over a week to get more information about the project ahead of the Monday night meeting.

“(The City is) working on changing the process for the future,” McQuaid-England said. “But in the meantime there were a whole bunch of public members who didn’t receive these documents,” she said.

Andrew Brouwer, Oshawa’s city clerk, said the situation was a miscommunication in his department. His staff first said that an FOI was necessary because of concerns that the environmental assessment documents might contain proprietary third-party information that shouldn’t be released.

Many other municipalities in the GTA post documents like environmental assessments for development projects publicly on their websites, McQuaid-England said.

Brouwer said he is working with Oshawa city staff to clarify the process, and make sure that similar documents are proactively disclosed to the public.

“There is a move to make more information publicly accessible routinely, without having to go through a (formal information) request,” Brouwer said.

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